


Fundamentals

by flickerface



Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M, POV Hermann Gottlieb
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-10
Updated: 2018-09-09
Packaged: 2019-04-20 22:23:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14270787
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flickerface/pseuds/flickerface
Summary: "Merely a thought. What if we endeavor to teach each other our subjects?"Hermann and Newt, two years after Pacific Rim.





	1. Chapter 1

The problem is that the odds are wrong. The statistics shouldn't work out like that: not consistently, not over such a long period of time. Hermann has drunk six cups of tea this morning already, because: he has tried every statistical model he can think of; he has tried running a neural network on the data, with every parameter variation possible; he has invented a couple of new statistical tests, which he should probably publish, he wrote enough documentation that even Newton would be able to use them competently; and he has come to the limits of his ingenuity. Nothing works. Nothing makes _sense_.

The Breach has been closed for two years now, two years and three weeks, and despite their conjectures and their models, they still do not know how or why it opened. They still do not comprehend how it closed.

No, more precise: Hermann does not know. He does not comprehend.

He goes to sip his tea, and finds his mug empty.

"Something must be wrong," he mutters to his papers. "Perhaps I slipped a digit." But he's double-checked the numbers, twice.

"Hey, Hermann," Newton says, coming into the lab. It is almost noon, time for him to make his usual appearance. He has his sleeves rolled up to the elbow already, kaiju tattoos showing.

"Good morning." A third check might help. He could write it up on his blackboards; he hasn't done that since the early stages of this project. Comprehending the Breach always was a fool's errand, but every scientific endeavor has seemed a fool's errand until the moment comprehension dawned.

Fetching his cane, Hermann pulls himself upright. He checks his mug out of habit. Empty. "Will you put the kettle on?"

No answer, so he turns. Newton is coming toward him, all determination. Hermann quirks his mouth and lets Newt step into his space for a kiss. He smoothes Newt's hair with his free hand. "Kettle?"

"Yeah," Newt says, "yeah," but he stays there for a moment anyway, smiling back at Hermann. "I like coming in here to find you hard at work."

"Hmm, well, not going so well today," Hermann says. He lifts his hand, and Newt goes to put the kettle on. Hermann moves to his chalkboards and hooks the top one down. It's got old calculations on it, so he picks up the eraser and begins to clean the board.

Newt says, "Yeah?" He fills the kettle at one of the potable-water sinks and flicks the switch. His hair is mussed where Hermann stroked it, and his fingers twitch with the urge to neaten it for him. Not that it would do much good; Newt's hair is always a mess.

Turning back to the chalkboard, Hermann clears his throat and swipes at the numbers. Chalk dust flies. "Probability appears to have taken a vacation where the Breach was concerned."

"I don't know what that means, but it doesn't sound good." Newt's footsteps approach.

"The blue one, on the desk," Hermann says, flapping his hand behind himself. "It means, well, it means that I cannot use statistical modeling to determine the particle interactions that formed the Breach."

"I know what your favorite mug is, dude," Newt says fondly. "Okay, I failed math—sorry, maths—and physics, so you're going to have to start at the beginning, here."

The last few strokes of the eraser take away the ends of equation lines. "How much time do you have?"

The kettle burbles, and then clicks off. There's the familiar sound of water pouring. Newt never puts the right amount of milk in, so Hermann looks around. His—lover—boyfriend—partner is frowning.

"What are you working on?" Hermann asks, tardily. "Some new property of kaiju bone marrow?"

Newt shakes his head. "No, I, I've been having trouble too. I've been spinning my wheels lately. We sequenced their DNA, but figuring out how they got from that to all their abilities, the electro-whoosis pulse, for one, it's just, it's a mess! Gene expression is one of the most complex topics in Earth biology, everyone knows that, and in kaiju..."

"I do not, in fact, know that," Hermann interrupts. He gets out the milk and adds it to his tea until it is the perfect shade of brown. "You know perfectly well I did poorly in biology."

That was one of the memories they had shared in their brief drift with a kaiju baby's brain, two years before. Hermann had failed an exam for the first time since he could remember. He had burst into tears in front of the entire class.

"You wound up getting 80% in that class."

Hermann sniffs, discarding the point. It was one of the worst grades of his life.

"Anyway, I've been stuck for weeks now. I've been emailing with all the other xenobio freaks but they don't have any more clue than I do. I don't know if I need fresh samples or just a new brain." He raps his knuckles on his forehead.

"Perhaps..." Hermann says.

Newt skews a look at him.

"No new samples," he hastens to clarify. "Merely a thought. What if we endeavor to teach each other our subjects? We shared—certain things—in the drift, and we have other things in common. Through explaining the fundamentals to one another, we might find how they underpin our current rese—"

"Oh my God," Newt says. "I'm so on board." He bounces up to Hermann and kisses him, jostling his tea and nearly sending it over all his papers. Hermann manages to save it, sets it down, and kisses Newton back with equal enthusiasm. He has not yet tired of being able to reach across his desk, the lab, and pull Newton in; place his hand at the back of Newt's neck; feel his pulse, that was not stilled forever by any of his reckless exploits; kiss that ridiculous, loud, aggravating, beautiful mouth.

Hermann realized, in the drift, that Newt had been serious all those times: all those touches, all those casual intimacies, all those things that Hermann had noted, analyzed, cataloged, and allocated into a pattern of men not wanting from him what he wanted from them—and therefore shied away from.

Newt had realized what Hermann was avoiding: not him, but the ghosts of so many others in his past.

Now, two years on, they are so familiar with each other that Hermann sometimes cannot even imagine another way.

"Then we're agreed," Hermann says, when they both come up for air. He considers Newt's face, close to his. "How far back shall I go? To calculus?"

Newton laughs a little, awkwardly, which means further.

"Well. Statistics does not _require_ calculus, strictly..." It's been a while since Hermann was a teacher. Longer still since he has technically been a student. He will have to come up with a plan of study. A syllabus. Some way for Newton to test his knowledge as he progresses.

Newt says, "I do know a little bit of statistics. Punnett squares, you know?"

"Squares are geometry," Hermann says, baffled.

"Oh, dude—no, let me show you—" Newt grabs a piece of chalk and starts drawing on the board. "Okay, lesson one. I think this was some guy way back in history who grew a lot of peas? And also maybe married his cousin. It's a long story. Anyhow..."

Hermann props himself against his desk, picks up his tea, and prepares himself to learn.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not sure how long this will be yet; stay tuned for science and feelings!


	2. I. Statistics

Newton Geiszler is an enthusiastic, if erratic, teacher.

He is a terrible student.

He argues with Hermann. He misunderstands things wildly and gets offended when Hermann tries to correct him. And then he dozes off on the couch not even a third of the way into Hermann's lecture on statistical tests, the history and taxonomy thereof, which Hermann has been preparing for a full week (alongside more—similarly futile—tests of his data).

"Newton," Hermann snaps. _He_ took notes on Newt's rambling disquisitions on Punnett squares, inherited traits, genotypes and phenotypes, and looked things up until he could make at least some sense of it all.

Then he sighs. Newt has been overworking himself. They both have been.

Just as Hermann goes to set down the chalk and find a blanket to cover him with, Newt jerks awake. He's alert in a second, scanning the chalkboards behind Hermann, and Hermann thinks with a flip of his stomach that he is seeing how Newt must have been in school. He has vague memories of it from the drift, now fading with time; all-nighters, caffeine and energy drinks, competitions with friends and classmates to see who could keep themselves awake the most inventively.

Even without the drift, though, Hermann would know perfectly well Newton's tendency to push himself too far, too long. They have shared a lab for long enough: he knows Newt stays up for days sometimes, energetic and babbling and making decreasing amounts of sense.

Hermann himself has always relied on routine to pull him through. He exhausts himself sometimes, but he goes to sleep at the same time, wakes up at the same time, makes sure he eats meals on schedule.

Two years of a relationship haven't changed either of them, really. They have simply had to accept one another—and themselves—for who they are.

Newton's focus pulls back from the chalkboards to Hermann. He has the grace to look sheepish. "Sorry," he says, and spoils it by yawning. "I'm all right now, really. Go on."

Hermann tsks. "Clearly, you are in no fit state to learn." He puts down the chalk after all. "Come. Let us go to our quarters."

"Heh," Newt says, bouncing his eyebrows, and yawns again.

"To sleep," Hermann says quellingly, not that that tone has ever worked. "I can pick this up some other day." He offers Newt a hand up.

Taking his hand, Newton instead tugs Hermann toward him. "C'mere. I like it when you talk math at me."

"Maths," Hermann corrects him, to make Newt grimace, which he does. He leans down and kisses him. "We have a whole room, you know. With a bed."

"Mmmm," Newt says, and drapes himself further over the couch, patting the cushion next to his hips invitingly.

Mock-reluctantly, Hermann sits, putting an arm around Newt's waist. There isn't quite enough room for both of them, but Newt—conscientious as, well, sometimes, in specific situations, mainly ones like this—scoots over until Hermann has enough space to rest his hip. It leaves them entangled, Newton's face inches from Hermann's. They kiss unhurriedly, Hermann lost in the warmth Newt always somehow radiates.

Minutes later, Newt draws back. He worries his bottom lip with his teeth, not in his deliberately sexy way, though it's still distracting. "Herms."

"I told you I hate that nickname," Hermann says, without heat. He does not hate it any more, and Newton uses it sparingly.

"I figured out why I failed statistics," he says, ignoring Hermann.

Hermann raises his eyebrows. "You took that as a freshman, you received a D, and it technically counted as No Record." Newton had been lucky statistics wasn't actually a requirement at MIT.

Newton says, "Exactly! It's because statistical tests are meant to model things, and I didn't know any things yet. And right now, I couldn't figure out what to connect any of what you were talking about to, so I lost focus. That's the answer, Hermann! That's it!"

"That's what?" Hermann is lost.

Newton beams at him. "You have to teach me physics."

"I was going to," he says, irritably. "You have no patience, Newton."

"I can't just _memorize_ things," Newt says.

Hermann scoffs. "Biology is all memorization."

"Whaaat?" Newt's voice squeaks up an octave. "It is not! Biology is about systems, man, whether it's DNA or cells or ecosystems—"

" _Physics_ is about systems."

"See!" Newton sticks a finger at him. "You have to teach me physics first. And then maybe I can help with your statistics and modeling. What about that model of the Breach you set up for the control center, by the way? That was so cool!"

Used to Newt's rapid leaps in subject by now, Hermann follows: "Well. That." He looks away from his partner's intense gaze. "That was the result of a certain amount of guesswork and some quantity of artistic license."

Newton is staring at him; Hermann can see out of the corner of his eye. "So when the Breach was destroyed and it did that cool thing—" He tries to imitate it with hand gestures: the disintegration, particles filtering down.

"Our seismometers and pressure sensors picked up the explosion and its aftermath. The Breach had been maintaining an odd pressure zone, which collapsed shortly after Mori and Becket's Jaeger exploded." His tone is prim, he knows. "I had programmed that animation into the model at the beginning. It was...a hope. That someday perhaps that subroutine would be triggered."

"Oh my God," Newton says. "That's so badass." Hermann thinks surely his next question will be: what if the sensors, the model, had been wrong? What if the subroutine had been triggered incorrectly? What if more kaiju had emerged and they were unprepared, thinking themselves safe? That is what he asks himself, some nights. "Did you even actually know what shape it was inside?"

Hermann hesitates. "No."

"Fuck me, that's awesome." Newt runs his hands through his hair. "I thought I was the rockstar, Herms! Why did you never tell me?"

"I always said it was merely a model." Which is not what Newton means. "Reminding everyone constantly would have been counterproductive. It produced reasonable simulations of reality, in a continual feedback loop with the remote sensing data. But it was never precise enough—" Newt pulls Hermann in until their lips meet, cutting off the rest of his sentence: _never precise enough to determine the underlying dynamics of the Breach._

All this data. No useful patterns.

Hermann leans into the kiss. He supposes Newton has a point, however poorly put. He will reorganize his syllabus, start perhaps with basic quantum mechanics.

But right here, now, he undoes the top button of Newt's shirt. This, this beautiful space of calm, is their reward for saving the world—however slapdash and dangerous their methods, jointly and separately—and Hermann intends to enjoy it.


	3. II. DNA

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Do I know biology? No. Did I google a bunch of basic facts half-remembered from high school while writing this chapter? Yes.

Hermann frowns at the screen. "Are you quite sure this is correct?"

Newton leans over his shoulder. "Yep, that's the right file."

"But all this—" He takes off his glasses so he can gesture with them. A jumble of letters fills the screen; Hermann has been going through it for two hours now. "It makes no sense. Even with what you taught me about the bases, and using the matching algorithms, there's so much here that just doesn't..."

"Make sense?" Newt is _grinning_ for some godforsaken reason. Hermann revises his assessment of Newton Geiszler: he is a cruel teacher.

He is also incredibly adorable when he's excited about his subject.

Hermann glares anyway. "Precisely. Would you care to explain why you have set me this fool's errand?"

Leaning against Hermann's desk, Newt smirks. "This is what I do."

"No wonder you are the way you are," Hermann says tartly.

Newton lounges even further. It is very clear he is enjoying this. He slings his head back at an angle, his throat an attractive slope of skin. "Gee, thanks, Hermann. That's the nicest thing you've ever said to me."

Mind on your work, Hermann reminds himself. He looks intently at the screen, scrolling further while he thinks. "So this whole mess, all of this was exactly the same for every kaiju?"

"Define exactly," Newt says.

Hermann concedes the point. "How much variation is there, then?"

"Well! Let's pull it all up." Newton nudges him out of the way and types quickly, opening several other files and tiling them on the screen. A few more command-line prompts and a few letters in flash into color, differences marked in bright neons. "All right. Scroll on through."

Hermann does. There aren't very many. He absently types in his own commands, running a comparison—the differences are minute, less than one hundredth of a percent, not statistically significant by any means. He says, "With cloning, though, you replicate the exact DNA. Right?"

Newt nods.

Settling back in his chair, Hermann narrow his eyes. "But twins, you said, don't have precisely the same DNA. But very, very close." Newton's little mmhmm of pleased agreement makes Hermann's breath catch.

He swallows and goes on, "Maybe the variation here is to give different kaiju their abilities. But the variants are so small, and so dispersed, it seems unlikely. So kaiju are...like twins. And that implies that there is variation elsewhere in the gene pool."

"Yeah." Newt is watching him, he can feel the biologist's gaze, but Hermann refuses to look around yet.

"Is that—one of your theories?"

"Even if they were absolutely identical, which some of them are, the Precursors must have gotten the base code from somewhere. Unless they're, like, way more advanced than we are. Which they are. Anyway, it's one idea."

"One idea that has some evidentiary support," Hermann murmurs. He runs his hand through his hair. "Are these differences enough to give the kaiju their distinct shapes and abilities?"

"Got me," Newton says cheerfully. "In the usual way, I would say absolutely not. Generally, every organism is unique. That's how you get variations, like you and me, even in a fairly similar gene pool."

"But," Hermann says, finally turning from the screen, "neither of us can generate an EMP strong enough to take out a major metropolitan area's entire power grid."

Newt shrugs, keeping eye contact with Hermann. "Speak for yourself, buddy." He leans over and kisses him lingeringly.

"Are we going to end every instruction session in this manner?" Hermann inquires when he—admittedly reluctantly—breaks away.

"Hmmmm, well, bio says it's our natural impulse."

"Is it now," Hermann says.

"And statistically speaking, it seems likely—" Newt laughs against Hermann's lips as Hermann pulls him in to stop him talking with a thorough kiss.

When he's quite finished shutting Newton up, Hermann informs him, "Probability says so, perhaps. But statistics would say nothing. Human-subjects research is chancy, and our sample size is far too small."

"Well," Newton says, wiggling his eyebrows, "we could always...enlarge it."

Hermann does not tell Newt he left him that line on purpose. Instead he smiles and offers his hand for Newt to help him up. "Today the bedroom. I insist."

Newt drops a kiss on his hand. "As you wish."


	4. III. Quantum Mechanics

"Tell me now about Entanglement. Einstein's spooky action at a distance," Newton murmurs.

Hermann says, "If you're only going to quote popular culture at me, I needn't bother continuing to explain Schrödinger's Equation." He rolls the R, leans into the umlaut on the O, part habit and part because he knows Newt will quirk his eyebrows up—just like that—and grin.

"I am as always attentive."

"As always," Hermann says dubiously, for Newton's smile to widen, and turns back to his board. "So. The Uncertainty Principle states that we can never know with absolute certainty both the position and velocity of a particle. Why is that?"

Newton says, "If you're trying to measure velocity, you're acting like it's a wave, and if you're trying to measure position, you're acting like it's a particle, and they can't both be true at the same time. Except they are. And you can sort of approximate both, if you wanna let both of them be kinda vague."

Surprised that he got that much, Hermann nods. "You have grasped the essentials."

"I do pay attention," Newton protests.

"So. Here is the equation in its linear algebra form," Hermann says, taking up the chalk again. "This is the same thing, simply a different mathematical representation."

He moves on briskly through variable relationships; the formulation of the electron; and a few examples.

"What about, what, protons? Neutrons?" Newt asks. Hermann glances back at him—he'd been worried Newton fell asleep, it had been so quiet, but no, he's sitting there worrying at his thumbnail with his teeth.

"Protons and neutrons are not elementary particles. They're made of quarks."

Newton frowns. "So you have to do this for every quark to figure out how a proton works? This is way too complicated, man."

"And then there are all the other elementary and composite particles," Hermann says, setting down his chalk. Newton groans. "There's a whole discipline of particle physics, you know."

"Yeah, well, there are reasons I didn't go into physics," Newton says.

"There are reasons I didn't go into physics, too," Hermann says wryly. "I'm supposed to be a mathematician, remember? Unfortunately for both of us, the underlying dynamics of particle interactions are likely to be the key to comprehending the Breach. Certainly it doesn't behave like it's made out of anything typically found on Earth. The closest analogs are to be found in cosmology." A handful of cosmologists redirected their efforts toward the Breach during or after the kaiju invasion, in fact, but none of them have gotten any further than Hermann himself.

"Like, black holes, and shit?"

"Black holes," Hermann says, "and shit." He quirks a smile Newt's direction. "Were it as simple as a black hole, I would not be in these straits."

"Or, like, a wormhole." Newton has a particular grin which means that he has thought of another science fiction movie he can quote from.

To forestall him, Hermann says, "For wormholes, we have to get into fundamental forces and field theories."

Newton sits bolt upright, face lighting up. "Wait. Wait wait wait. There's actual science for wormholes?! You've been holding out on me!"

Hermann does not grin at his partner. "It's a lot more math," he cautions.

"I'm ready! Lay it on me!"

Turning back to the chalkboard, Hermann allows himself a private moment of satisfaction. "There are four known fundamental forces, also called interactions," he says. "One of them is gravity..."

When he looks around, Newton has propped his chin on his hands and is watching his every movement. It will last no more than half an hour, Hermann is sure, but in that time he can get through at least the basics.

Maybe not to wormholes, but they can always save that for next time.

In actuality, though, Newton pays close attention and asks questions for a good two hours. It's Hermann who finally says, "That's enough for today, I think."

Newton scans the filled chalkboards behind him, a furrow between his eyebrows.

Hermann goes over, leaning on his cane, and sits by him on the couch. "More questions?"

For another full minute, Newton just stares at the scrawled equations. Then: "I don't get it," he says. "Why do some particles cause forces—interactions—and some don't? How come gravity doesn't have a particle basis, as far as anyone knows? How come—what. You're laughing at me."

"They're good questions!" Making an effort, he collects himself. "You want about five more doctorates, then?"

"I mean, I've got another wall to put 'em on, still," Newt says, shrugging one-shouldered. "Sure. As long as you'll come with me to answer all my questions."

"I thought we had proven quite thoroughly that I will follow you anywhere."

Newton leans into him at that, solid and warm. "Sure, dude, but into a kaiju's brain isn't exactly the same deal as answering my fool questions."

"I already answer your fool questions," Hermann says, fondly. "But you'd better pick somewhere with more than one university, because I am categorically never teaching any class with you in it."

With a snort, he says, "Afraid the other students will be jealous?"

"It hardly seems fair to them," Hermann agrees, and cranes his neck around to kiss him.

But they part after only an unhurried minute, and Newton eyes the boards again speculatively. "I haven't sucked at something in a while," he says, considering the merits. "(Don't even start, Herms.) It's a good practice..."

Tucking himself alongside Newton, Hermann wonders happily how long it will take his lover to surpass his knowledge. He asks, "What else do you want to know?"


End file.
